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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   36401 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 10, 2023

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I could start to argue metaphysics, because I definitely think your view is incoherent, but that's boring and not very convincing.

Let us instead drop merrily into the realms of practicality: immortality is heavily and obviously dysgenic. Stagnant organisms lose the possibility to change, and therefore to adapt. And no cultural process can replicate one's just anihilation once they have indeed, outlived their usefulness.

I'm sorry, but who asked?

Well your children presumably. I certainly think the boomers are robbing a few generations of their due by sticking around and holding onto all ressources for too long. Which is not fair, because they were themselves handed society in trust.

Immortality is just the extreme extension of this problem.

why does it matter what is improved in the future if you wont be alive to witness it?

Because society was not given to you, it was loaned. You have a duty to the future much like the past had a duty to you.

If you break that, things stop existing.

And who started this duty in the first place?

How is it in your self-interest to restrict other people from making themselves immortal?

who started this duty in the first place?

Your ancestors, and ultimately abiogenesis.

How is it in your self-interest to restrict other people from making themselves immortal?

This is a much larger question and one that is dependent on large amounts of context. I personally favor the Hoppean solution to this problem, which is that you are absolutely allowed to have values that are sorely incompatible with mine so long as you do it away from me and my kin and don't try to interfere in our affairs.

Your ancestors, and ultimately abiogenesis.

so to clarify, this duty you are referring to is about continuing the cycle of evolution where species change through generations to adapt to their environments by way of natural selection processes, and you are saying that abiogenesis started this duty? if so, thats gibberish to me because abiogenesis is not some person that can make a contract with anybody thereby giving them a duty, with all due respect, I think youre just making stuff up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law

Please read Aristostle, Cicero, Aquinas, Hobbes and then I'll gladly have a conversation about whether or not it's a valid or compelling ethical framework, but you need to understand where any of the western canon of morality even comes from for us to possibly have this conversation.

I for one would be ecstatic to have my parents around for longer, along with the rest of their generation, even if it robs my generation of its due.

I agree that greatly extending the human lifespan would cause massive societal problems. I am willing to struggle with those massive societal problems for as many centuries as it takes.

I think it's pointed out elsewhere in this thread, but this is where the bright line between immortality and anti-aging is fuzzy. Had we robust ways of dealing with those societal problems one might be able to consider integrating that technology.

But to remove death in the absolute is clearly over the line for me. I won't go into the minute details of why given there's seemingly endless art that explores the topic.

I don't think the ways to deal with those societal problems have to be particularly robust, at least not at first. If you eliminated aging today, the short-term (next 10 years) problems would look pretty similar to the problems we face today. On a fairly immediate timescale we'd need to deal with social security, as that would suddenly have a very different financial outlook. Over the time scale of decades or centuries, we would face new and interesting problems, but I don't think "we would have moderate political difficulties immediately, and we'd need to tweak some laws in 50-100 years" is a good reason to block anti-aging tech.

But to remove death in the absolute is clearly over the line for me.

To remove the ability to die would also be clearly over the line to me. But to remove the bit where the bits of my mind that make me me slip away one by one, and then the body that used to contain the person who was me stops breathing? And to do that for everyone who wants it? I think that would be massively good on the balance.

You say this, and yet my country is right now enthralled in chaos all because our ponzi scheme of a pension system couldn't even handle a fluctuation in demography that is so extremely mild compared to the change you're advocating for.

I don't think you've even begun to think through the changes to just the financial system that something like this would cause. Not to mention second or third order effects.

What would the effect on the pressure to have state-sponsored retirement be once people no longer have to quit the workforce and the concept of "work for 40 years and then have a rest until you die" loses its meaning?

I don't think "if we save the lives of our citizens it might cause moderate financial distress to our country" is a good reason to consign those citizens to death. Obviously there exists an amount of financial distress where it becomes worthwhile. "plunge the country into poverty to save one life" is obviously a bad idea. I'd argue even the recent case of "devalue the currency by 20% to prevent the loss of an average of 2 weeks of life" went too far on that front.

But I think curing aging would be a massive boon even considering the second and third order effects. I think it would probably be worth it even if it led to a full Zimbabwe-level economic blowup, though I'm not entirely sure in that case.

Stagnant organisms lose the possibility to change, and therefore to adapt.

Again, an ability that they only don't have as long as the evolutionary process didn't deem it necessary for them to propagate. Or as long as they don't research neuroplasticity restoration and body modification.

Well your children presumably.

I'm sure I'll reckon with my children amicably, somehow. Another incentive for us all to go to space. We could also explore all those proposals about social systems that discourage concentrating wealth in a few people's hands...

"It's not like you can take it to the grave" would certainly age like milk.

as they don't research

All I'm hearing is a communist assuring me that once computers get good enough, they'll solve the economic calculation problem and we'll have FALGSC.

I hold this to be wish fulfillment untethered to reality, like a lot of futurism.

I'm sure I'll reckon with my children amicably,

I don't think you will. Chronos didn't really get along very well with Zeus.

Another incentive for us all to go to space.

Fair enough, but I hold no objection to that. Exploration is, in fact, quite natural for humans.

All I'm hearing are appeals to "it's always been that way therefore it can only be that way" and stridently ignoring all the cases where that principle didn't work, so I suppose we're even. Besides, I wasn't talking about computers or magically inventing FALGSC out of thin air. Medical advancement isn't that fantastical. Certainly not too fantastical to refute conjecture of the "immortality is stagnancy" rate.

Chronos didn't really get along very well with Zeus.

I hold this to be paint-the-bullseye justification of the current state of reality, like a lot of ancestral wisdom.

What can I say except that I disagree with your evaluation of what is and isn't fantastical?

I hold this to be paint-the-bullseye justification of the current state of reality, like a lot of ancestral wisdom.

And I hold this to be immortal wisdom about the nature of reality endlessly rediscovered by all human civilizations. Potato, potahto.

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